Published 10:00 pm, Tuesday, July 22, 2003

It is T-minus eight days until the Major League Baseball trade deadline. While Mariners general manager Pat Gillick insists, "we don't feel we have to make a trade," the club's dreadful performance over the past 20 games and .500 performance over the past 40 screams otherwise.

The minute you hear trade talk, it is inevitable someone will say, "I don't want to mortgage the future."

To be blunt, that is the biggest hogwash you will ever hear.

It is impossible in a single trade or two at the trade deadline to "mortgage the future." It is a phrase used by gutless general managers as an excuse when they are unable to pull off a trade.

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If a team tried to ruin its future with trades at the deadline, it couldn't do it. Woody Woodward tried in 1997 and the Mariners have had limited ill effects.

Can there be a worse trade than when the Mariners traded Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek to Boston for Heathcliff Slocomb? Couple that with trading Jose Cruz Jr. to Toronto for Mike Timlin and Paul Splojeric and the Mariners gave away three players who could have started for the next decade in Seattle, two of whom have played in an All-Star Game.

The impact of these dreadful deals was two trips to the American League Championship Series in the next four seasons ... not bad.

Mortgaging the future simply can't be done. In a game of 25 players per team and complete minor-league systems, there is no set of players that a team would reasonably trade that would destroy its future.

Furthermore, with free agency, teams are able to fill specific needs quite easily. As the second-highest revenue team in baseball, the Mariners should have no problem filling their needs, even if they have only the 11th-highest payroll.

To truly mortgage the future, a trade would have to leave an entire organization without any other prospects.

Sadly, the lack of depth in the minor-league system is one of the reasons the Mariners have cited in explaining their dormant behavior in recent trade periods. This is embarrassing. It implies the Mariners' minor-league system is either without any appealing prospects or is so thin that you think you might actually "mortgage the future" by trading your prospects. If true, this is organizational failure.

The truth is the Mariners have shown an aversion to trading a player who one day might be good. The idea of hording all of your own players is absurd. It is OK to trade a potential star. A player is simply an asset. Trading is all about moving assets.

The best organizations are able to acquire assets that bring value to their organization regardless of what happens with the player they traded.

Former Mariners litter the big leagues, having huge success. Simultaneously, the Mariners have been one of the model franchises in baseball for the past three seasons. So the trades clearly didn't hurt too much. Now they seem frozen at the prospect of moving anybody who might have a future.

Obviously, an organization can't trade their Alex Rodriguez- or Ken Griffey Jr.-type prospects, but beyond that special elite level, it is a crapshoot on who makes it and who doesn't.

Look at the Mariners' top pitching prospects of the recent past. The Mariners were unwilling to move Gil Meche, Joel Pineiro or Ryan Anderson because they were simply too valuable. With perfect hindsight, a trade of Anderson could have brought the Mariners a World Series title for a player who will likely never pitch in the big leagues.

Most people say thank goodness the Mariners didn't trade Meche. I ask: Why do you believe that?

A trade of Meche or Pineiro and the Mariners would have been fine. It is a fair supposition that a player the quality the Mariners would have received in exchange for Meche or Pineiro might have pushed the Mariners past the Yankees and to the World Series.

At what cost? Meche or Pineiro would be winning somewhere else in the big leagues and the Mariners would have a rotation of Garcia, Jamie Moyer, Ryan Franklin, Pinero or Meche and whoever replaced the departed pitcher. The options are numerous. Maybe it would be Denny Stark, who the Mariners traded for Jeff Cirillo and has since gone 12-4 for the Rockies. Whoever would have filled the role, the likelihood is the Mariners would be exactly where they are today.

The Mariners are desperate for help and Gillick seems conservatively content to stand pat. Yet, if the organization he has built is put together correctly, there is no way he can destroy the future with a deadline deal.

If the next eight days pass and the Mariners are again on the outside looking in, it will be a terrible shame. If they say it's because they didn't want to "mortgage the future," tell them you aren't buying it.